From UBC young Liberal to federal candidate

Victoria — Just a few days ago, University of British Columbia student Kyle Warwick was vying for re-election to the university’s Arts Undergrad Society. Now, the 22-year-old is hoisting the Liberal banner across 300,000 square kilometres of coastal British Columbia.

It’s a long shot, to say the least. Stretching from Bella-Coola to the Queen Charlotte Islands to the Yukon border, Skeena-Bulkley Valley is one of Canada’s largest ridings. Most of its 60,000 voters (32% of whom are aboriginal) make their living in mines and logging camps. Since 2004 they have voted in the NDP’s Nathan Cullen by 5,000-vote margins. They elected their last Liberal MP in 1972. In 2008, social worker Corinna Morhart could only capture 5.5% of the vote for the Liberals.

Mr. Warwick has only been to the riding once — when he was driving through it en route to a mining job in the Yukon. The political science student was handed the nomination after the Liberals could not find a single local to put on the ballot. “It’s not a happy occasion to have to do this,” said Liberal riding president Rhoda Witherly to a local newspaper. “On the other hand, it’s better than not having a candidate at all.”

Still, Mr. Warwick is optimistic. He has postponed his final exams, boned up on Northern B.C. politics and next week he boards a plane to Prince Rupert. “I’m not [going] to claim I have the answers to everything, I’m going to listen to what the constituents say,” he says from Vancouver.

Mr. Warwick isn’t alone. Earlier this week, two other UBC Young Liberals got word that they were running in near-hopeless ridings in the B.C. interior. Sangeeta Lalli, a fourth-year political science student, is packing her bags for the central B.C. riding of Cariboo Prince George. Stewart McGillivray, president of the UBC Young Liberals, is putting his name on the ballot for the Greater Vancouver riding of Port Moody-Westwood-Port Coquitlam. There, he will face Conservative James Moore, a student himself when he was elected as a Canadian Alliance MP in 2000. “Mr. Moore is a young attractive candidate, but the same can’t be said for his government — which is what I’ll be running against.”

Unlike Ms. Lalli and Mr. Warwick, Mr. McGillivray will at least be within reasonable distance of his would-be constituency. “It’s very accessible by public transit,” he says.

Interior B.C. has been an NDP/Tory battleground for decades. Meanwhile, most ridings have not hosted a Liberal since Trudeaumania. Nevertheless, the Liberals have rarely had a problem recruiting local teachers or business owners eager to spar with Stockwell Day or Chuck Strahl in the local news. If they manage not to lose out to a Green partier, the candidacy is deemed a success.

But in 2008, the party was humiliated after nine B.C. ridings sent their Liberal candidates to fourth place. Liberal enthusiasm has been in short supply ever since. This year, almost two weeks into the campaign, the Liberals were forced to scramble for parachute candidates after five B.C. ridings failed to furnish a single Liberal nominee. “I was asked if any Young Liberals were willing to carry the party banner in some ridings where we thought we would have candidates, but at the last minute it looked like we weren’t able to,” said Mr. McGillivray.

Recruiting students may be standard fare for the Green party, but it is relatively new terrain for the Liberals. In 2008, 19-year-old Drew Adamick was the party’s only student candidate — and rather than being plucked out of class at the 11th hour, he had been vying for the nomination for more than a year. Still, his run for Cariboo-Prince George was a debacle. The UBC student did his best with $5,000, a handful of volunteers and a campaign office in his basement. But on election day, he came in 6,000 votes behind his 2006 predecessor.

“I felt I got laid out to dry by the Liberals,” Mr. Adamick says. “They didn’t do much more than give me some signs and say, ‘Go forth.’ ”